Metagenomics of tuberculosis infection in Hong Kong
WY Lam1, MK Cheung2, WYW Fung1, PTW Law2, KM Kam3, CH Au2, WY Nong2, D Hwang4, RCY Chan5, HS Kwan2, SKW Tsui1,6
1 School of Biomedical Sciences, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
2 School of Life Sciences, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
3 Centre for Health Protection, Department of Health
4 Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, University of Toronto,
Canada
5 Department of Microbiology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
6 Hong Kong Bioinformatics Centre, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
1. Taxonomic assignment of the sequence reads using the Ribosomal Database Project Classifier showed that Firmicutes, Proteobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Actinobacteria, and Fusobacteria were the major bacterial phyla recovered from sputum. They composed over 98% of the microbial community in both the tuberculosis (TB) and control samples.
2. Upon genera identification, 16 major bacterial genera were recovered in the sputum samples. The most abundant genera in the TB samples were Neisseria (28.0%), Streptococcus (27.8%), and Prevotella (16.8%), whereas those for the controls were Streptococcus (31.8%), Neisseria (22.0%), and Prevotella (14.4%). Neisseria and Prevotella were more dominant in the TB samples and Streptococcus was more dominant in the controls.
3. The microbial diversity was similar in both the TB and the control sputum samples. There was no relationship between microbial diversity and disease state. This may be because different diseases may involve different sets of microbiota.
2. Upon genera identification, 16 major bacterial genera were recovered in the sputum samples. The most abundant genera in the TB samples were Neisseria (28.0%), Streptococcus (27.8%), and Prevotella (16.8%), whereas those for the controls were Streptococcus (31.8%), Neisseria (22.0%), and Prevotella (14.4%). Neisseria and Prevotella were more dominant in the TB samples and Streptococcus was more dominant in the controls.
3. The microbial diversity was similar in both the TB and the control sputum samples. There was no relationship between microbial diversity and disease state. This may be because different diseases may involve different sets of microbiota.